Governor Palin’s speech was one of the best I’ve ever heard. She said it like it is, unlike the mindless sheep who adore Obama, even though he’s just an empty suit. Most of the negative blogs on this site appear to have been written before the speech was even given. Comments by brain washed Obamabots, who infect the blog sites with the same sarcastic partisan posts, no matter what the story is about. Keep America strong, elect McCain / Palin in November. No Wright, no Farrakahn, no Ayers, no Rezko, no mean Michelle, NOBAMA

Real classy reporting from the CBC’s Neil MacDonald, floating an already-debunked “rumour” that Sarah Palin faked the maternity of her baby Trig, and that her daughter Bristol was Trig’s actual mother.

Absolutely inexcusable. It seems there is no mud puddle the MSM won’t slither into to slag this woman.

Macdonald’s head should roll for this.

Dang, I knew it was from the Manchurian Candidate too, but I didn’t get here in time.

Palin’s voice reminds me of Marge Gunderson (Frances Mcdormand) in “Fargo”: “There’s more to life than a little bit of money. Doncha know that?” Her character was hugely pregnant too, but you’ll have to show Neil Macdonald the tape.

If Trig hadn’t been in the hall, people would have been asking whey they were “hiding” him. Feh.

Joan’s absolutely right on that last point. The lady has a family. The family came to her speech. The baby needs a lot of attention and, I am quite sure, gets it even when there are no cameras around. There is plenty to criticize, but if any of you were picked as the vice-presidential candidate of a major political party — and, apparently, it can now happen to just about anyone — you’d want your family there, and you’d be properly appalled if millions of strangers seized on that wish as some kind of character flaw. I obviously wasn’t thrilled by Palin’s speech, but it is profoundly creepy to hear people who pride themselves on their sophistication referring to her child as a “prop.”

“The reaction she has received from the mainstream press and from people like Paul Wells smacks of elitism. I may be wrong but elitism is not something that the American voter is happy with.”

And having “Joe Average” as president has proven to be such a success for the American people. I fail to understand why the majority of people want the leader of the most powerful nation on earth (for now anyway) to be an average “one of us” on every level? Do they want their doctors to be everyday sort of folks too? Embracing the lowest common denomenator of society is not a way to chose a President. A little elitism might do everyone some good.

And maybe Obama isn’t the answer, but can we at least stop penalizing people for being educated and stop viewing the President of the USA as a position to be held by someone who reminds me of my favourite Aunt Betty or the good mechanic in town!?!

As for Chris…….YIKES!

Palin was speaking to the base, which McCain needs to mobilize in order to get out the vote. I don’t think she is an utter flop among independents though (for reference I would have voted Democrat 1992-2004 and would vote for McCain in ’08), as she opens up some potential room to maneuver.

-attack Washington and in particular, congress (which has even lower approval ratings than Bush), tying Obama to Pelosi and Reid.

-she can attract SOME Hillary voters. If you look at who voted for Clinton in particular, she had strengths with…
working class women
old people
hispanic voters
gender voters (15-20% of primary voters for Clinton said they voted primarily out of gender)

Palin helps with 1 and 4. Now I know what you are saying about group 4 – ABORTION! But reality is not what you would suspect – women are actually more likely to be pro-life than men (there is a pro-choice majority in each case).

SurveyUSA asked about abortion in its primary polls. In Ohio, their poll of likely primary voters found 36% that were pro-life, 61% were pro-choice. Clinton led among pro-life voters 52-45, and among pro-choice voters 56-42.

So there is a market for Palin among the 18 million Clinton voters – the third of Clinton voters that are pro-life, the ~35% with high school or less (a proxy for working class) and the 20% of Clinton voters that are gender voters.

That will have to compensate loss of moderate voters overall, who are repelled by Palin’s stance on abortion (which is not radically difference from McCain’s, but people don’t perceive McCain as hardcore pro-life).

Speaking of the baby, Don Newman and Henry Champ just now echoed the “prop” allegation on Newsworld’s “Politics”, buttressed by “women I was speaking to” (Newman) and, apparently, comments on the CBC’s website. A shortened Politics repeats at 7:30 EST so there may be a chance to see it again.

As I said in another forum yesterday, what has been emanating from the mouths and keyboards of liberals and feminists in the last few days is making me laugh my kiester off. There’s nothing like a minority or female with the “wrong” views to expose some interesting double standards.

I’ve never been keen on McCain (too much media-courting and carrying water for the Dems), and my expectation is still that Obama will win, the Dems will gain seats in the Senate and take the House again. But ever since the Britney-Paris ad, this has sure been entertaining.

Paul Wells wrote: “…it is profoundly creepy to hear people who pride themselves on their sophistication referring to her child as a “prop.” ”

Agreed. Palin is the real “prop” in all of this.

Wayne you’re right. McCain should have taken up Biden’s offer to be his running mate. But I guess then the fact that he said that Mr Obama is “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy” would probably come back to haunt him.

What people have seen of Palin so far is a week of unbroken media criticism followed by the best crafted speech she’ll ever give. This is not a typical week for her. Whether or not she appeals beyond the base will depend on what her typical weeks look like. The polls right now don’t tell the story, just what the story will be if the campaign team doesn’t use the numbers to decide their strategy for her.

Also, I’m pretty sure only a guy with no children would react this way, but when she held her baby on stage after the speech, my first thought was: if she drops that thing this election is OVER.

Wayne: Under that logic, criticism over adscam was just because people were afraid of Chretian.

Steve: So any complaints you had about adscam weren’t really because of adscam but because you feared Chretien’s power with teen-age rock-singers?